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PAPER 



ON 



THE STANDARD OF 

NATIONAL EDUCATION 



MRS. W. GREY, . 

READ AT THE MEETING OF 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION, BRISTOL, 

August, 1875. 



REPRINTED FROM THE JOURNAL OF THE 
WOMEN'S EDUCATION UNION. 



205449 
'15 






A PAPER 

ON THE 

STANDARD OF NATIONAL EDUCATION. 

Read at the Meethig of the British Association, Bristol, 



In the paper I had the honour to read 
before this Association last year I 
pointed out the necessity of studying 
education as a science. This year I 
wish to draw your attention to some 
practical considerations arising from the 
scientific view of education, and of these 
the most important seems to me that 
which forms the title of my paper, i.e., 
the Standard of National Education, or, 
in other words, the ultimate aim we pro- 
pose to ourselves in the education of 
the nation, and towards which all its 
separate parts should lead up as means 
to an end. In my former paper I de- 
fined education to be ' the direction 
given to the development of the whole 
human being, by the external influences 
brought to bear upon him, aiding, ar- 
resting, or distorting his growth ; ' and the 
same definition may be applied to 
national as to individual education. 
According to this definition, the term 
'National Education' will include all 
instruction from the elementary school 
to the university, all the direct moral 
and intellectual influences brought to 
bear on childhood and youth, in home 
and school life, and the indirect, but 
often more powerful influence of the 
associations and habits which are the 
unconscious and involuntary result of 
the social atmosphere which surrounds 
us, — the physical, moral, and intellectual 
conditions of the time and country in 
which we live, the station we belong to, 
the habits, beliefs, prejudices prevalent 
in our immediate section of society. No 
one will dispute that the two former 
elements in national education, the in- 
struction and direct influence of home 
and school, are within our control, and 
can be deliberately guided towards a 
chosen and defined result, but the 
latter, the indirect influence of our sur- 



roundings, may seem to result from general 
conditions as independent of our will as 
the changes of the atmosphere. It is, 
however, just on this element, variable 
and uncontrollable as it seems, that a 
standard of national education, if we 
had one, would exercise a most powerful 
influence. For in every nation, every 
class of society, every profession having 
any vigorous life, we find an ideal of 
what the nation, the class, the profession 
should be, which affects every individual 
composing them, and which, from being 
constant and universal, while all other 
influences are more or less variable and 
individual, is the most powerful agent in 
moulding character and influencing con- 
duct. The most unimaginative of hu- 
man beings is swayed by this ideal 
which is embodied to him in the public 
opinion of his class, his set, or his pro- 
fession. It is the unwritten law of life ; 
governing it far more effectually than 
any written code and enforced by social 
pains and penalties far more certain and 
more dreaded than any legal judgment. 
The actual practice will inevitably fall 
short of the ideal, but there is a general 
tendency towards it which keeps the 
deviations within certain limits, below 
which none can fall without coming 
under the social ban. 

Some such ideal does, in fact, exist 
in the different classes of society with 
regard to education as to all other 
requirements of social life. The ques- 
tion I wish to bring before you is what in 
each case decides the standard ; whether 
it is an adequate one, judged from a 
general, not a class, point of view, and 
whether the principles of education, 
derived from the study of it as a 
science, would not supply us with a 
standard universally applicable, which 
might become the ideal of national 



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education and raise both its theory and 
practice out of the realm of unreasoning 
custom and fashion to that of national 
and well-grounded method. 

We have not far to seek for the deter- 
mining causes of the existing standard 
of education in the different classes of 
society. From the highest to the lowest 
its ground is a certain fitness to the 
position in life of the children to be edu- 
cated. The estimate of what this fitness 
consists in, varies considerably from 
generation to generation. The feudal 
baron, as we all know, took pride in his 
ignorance of all clerkly arts, and would 
as soon have thought of sending his sons 
to any school but that of arms and 
knightly exercises, as of making them 
hucksters or labourers. His representa- 
tives of to-day go to school and college 
as a matter of course ; and the supposed 
acquisition, at least, of scholarship and 
culture, is an essential part of the fitness 
for their station, which is the standard 
of education of their caste. The educa- 
tion of women and of the poorer classes 
has in the same way been entirely 
guided by this standard of fitness, which 
has necessarily varied with the state of 
society. The daughters of the feudal 
baron before mentioned were trained in 
all sorts of housewifely arts, including 
some simple medicine and surgery, 
which their modern representatives 
would despise as too homely, or maybe 
unfeminine ; while from the latter is re- 
quired an amount of literary and artistic 
accomplishment, — or its seeming, at least, 
as in the case of their brothers, — which 
would have been deemed preposterous 
by their more remote ancestresses, and 
contemptibly flimsy by the dames of 
Queen Elizabeth's time, who learnt 
Greek and Latin, and read Aristotle and 
Cicero, before it had been discovered 
that solid knowledge was more danger- 
ous to feminine worth and grace than a 
smattering of desultory information and 
accomplishments never ' really accom- 
plished. 

The education of the labouring classes 
is entirely a modern growth, and in 
England it has had to fight at every step 
against the notion of its unfitness for 
their station in life. In every discussion 
on the subject, in and out of parliament, 
as to its quantity and its quality, this is 
the standard always referred to ; and the 
question turns not upon the value of the 
education in improving our human 



material, but upon [how much or how 
little can be given in the humble position 
of the recipients without danger of set- 
ting them above it. In spite of the pass- 
ing of the Elementary Education Act, 
there is still a large minority who hold 
any instruction beyond the three R's a 
dangerous gift to the poor, and its 
possi))le inconvenience to their betters 
a sufficient reason for withholding it. Of 
course it is understood that education in 
every class shall include moral and religi- 
ous training, and that the young of both 
sexes shall be prepared to obey the code 
of morals, and accept the religious creed 
of their family and section of society. 
But in all classes alike, we shall find 't 
governed by temporary and adventitious 
circumstances, having no reference tc 
any general, and still lees to any scien- 
tific principle. I think I am fully borm 
out by the facts when I assert that, fc 
the immense majority of the nation, < 
the highest as much as the lowest, th " 
idea of education, as the systematic dt 
velopment of the whole nature an 
powers of the human being as sucj^ 
irrespective of class or sex, as far a 
nature and circumstances permit an 
the equally systematic preparation of tl 
young to use the powers so developed i 
the performance of their duties as huma- 
beings, as members of a family and tj 
society, is absolutely non-existent, an 
when put before them, will rather b. 
contemned as theoretical and doctrinaire 
or, at best, be regarded as a counsel e 
perfection too high for ordinary practice 
than accepted as the true standard h\ 
which all educational efforts should bi 
measured, and which public opinicr 
should be educated to recognise and en- 
force, as the standard of national educa 
tion. Confirmation of this fact, if any b^ 
needed, may be found in the contemptu- 
ous treatment by the House of Commons 
only the other day of the proposals of the 
Government to endow a Chair of Peda- 
gogy, — why could they not call it Educa- 
cational Science ? — in the University of 
Edinburgh, which caused it to be with- 
drawn without a division. 

No wonder that when the highest 
council of the nation rejects with deri- 
sion the idea that education is either a 
science or an art in need of professional 
exposition, and does not even conde- 
scend to look abroad and notice the 
fact that the chair, considered so un- 
necessary in Edinburgh, exists in every 



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German and Swiss University ; that the 
ordinary public should know no better, 
and still trust the training of their chil- 
dren to the ignorant treatment they 
would not tolerate for a moment in the 
management of their crops or their 
cattle. 

I will proceed now to point out what 
from the scientific point of view, which 
takes human nature for its basis, should 
be the standard of education in its 
three great divisions, — physical, intel- 
lectual, and moral. In each of these 
divisions we find a certain hierarchy of 
powers, and a proportion between them, 
the observation of which is essential to 
armony of development. If this be lost 
ight of, the result is more or less of dis- 
)rtion. Let us begin with physical 
•aining. If any one set of muscles is 
xclusively developed without due atten- 
on to the exercise of all, and especially 
) the healthy action of the vital organs, 
le lungs and heart, not only is the 
Hrst element of beauty, proportion, sacri- 
■■ced, but strength, vital power, is 
icrificed with it. We may have, as is 
. ;en every day, with our imperfect and 
I nscientific methods of physical training, 
;'ie arm of a blacksmith and the leg of 
a n opera-dancer, with a flabby heart and 
;; narrow chest. The Greeks possessed 
I'lis standard of physical perfection, 
c ^pressed it in their art, and worked up 
t I it in the training of their youth. We 
iiave their statues, to preserve it amongst 
curselves, and resources of medical and 
anatomical knowledge and appliances 
Tir beyond any they possessed. Why 
-hould we not make it our ideal also, and 
V ork up to it ? Why should we not aim 
a.u beauty of form and grace of action 
as they did.'' Assuredly we do not 
undervalue them now ; and in our public 
schools and universities the games and 
the boating, which are amongst the best 
means of physical training, hold a higher 
place in the estimation of the pupils 
themselves and of the general public 
than the studies for which schools and 
universities exist. Would it be much 
more expensive and more trouble- 
some to make our drill, our gymnastics, 
our athletic sports, our calisthenics — to 
use the absurd word adopted for bodily 
exercises in girls' schools — parts of a really 
scientific physical training, steadily di- 
rected to obtaining not only strength which 
means health, but the grace which makes 
health and strength beautiful, and re- 



ducing to a minimum weakness, dispro- 
portion, and awkwardness .'' I do not 
suppose that we should create a popula- 
tion of ApoUos and Dianas, but we 
should greatly increase the number of 
healthy, active, weU-grown, and grace- 
ful men and women ; and we may take 
encouragement as to what can be done 
in this way, even in a short time, 
from the transformation in daily opera- 
tion amongst us, of the loutish, round- 
shouldered, clumsy recruit, into the 
lithe, springy, erect Life-guardsman, the 
observed of all observant nursery-maids. 
It is to be borne in mind also that such 
a national standard of physical education 
would indirectly act upon more than the 
school training. It Vv'ould give import- 
ance to the conditions of healthy devel- 
opment before and after, as well as dur- 
ing, the school life of the child, and 
scientific unity to sanitary legislation, by 
making every step a means towards the 
same end, the physical improvement and 
perfection of our human breed, so infi- 
nitely less regarded hitherto than that 
of our cattle. 

Let us pass on now to intellectual 
training. Here I expect to be triumph- 
antly told that standards are not want- 
ing, since examinations are the order 
of the day, and success in passing them, 
that is, in coming up to the standards 
they prescribe, the inevitable portal of 
almost every profession. Allow me to 
point out, however, that these standards, 
in every case from the elementary 
schools upwards, test only the neces- 
sarily fragmentary bits of knowledge 
acquired by the pupils or candidates 
submitted to them, and cannot in any 
sense be taken as standards of intel- 
lectual development. Such a standard 
must be sought, as in the case of phy- 
sical training in the constitution of 
human nature, and must measure not 
knowledge, but intellectual power. Here 
also our ideal must include not only 
development but harmony, that balance 
of the intellectual forces in their due re- 
lation to each other, which is the es- 
sential condition of soundness of mind. 
To develope exclusively one set of 
powers, or allow one or other to get the 
ascendancy when it ought to be subordi- 
nate, is as destructive to mental as to 
bodily health and perfection. We shall 
discover their natural order by looking 
to the supreme end of intellectual life, 
which is right reasoning ; the discern- 



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mcnt of the true rcLitions to each other 
and to ourselves of the objects and per- 
sons making up the world in which we 
live. I am aware that some excellent 
people think reasoning a recondite pro- 
cess only carried on by philosophers, and 
that others consider it a dangerous and 
presumptuous exercise, overlooking, in 
their timid or indolent refusal to use 
the light God has given them, that what 
they term the pride of human reason, 
is humility itself, compared to the ar- 
rogance of human ignorance. But, 
whether we like it or not, it is, in fact, 
as impossible for our minds not to 
reason, i.e., draw inferences, right or 
wrong, from the facts presented to us, 
as it is for our lungs not to breathe ; 
only the defects in our breathing are 
at once recognised as disease, requiring 
cure, whereas the defects in our rea- 
soning are seldom recognised by our- 
selves, at least, until they produce the 
unpleasant results of failure or disaster; 
and not always even then, for only 
minds of rare candour admit that their 
misfortunes are the natural fruit of their 
blunders, not of their ill-luck. As- 
suming, then, the supremacy of reason 
as our intellectual ideal, the standard 
of intellectual education should be the 
formation of sound judgment, which, 
exercised on common things, is no other 
than common sense, and in the region 
of abstract thought is the discovery of 
truth. I need scarcely point out that 
this standard is thoroughly practical, 
since the exercise of judgment is the 
necessary antecedent of all deliberate 
action, — action neither automatic from 
habit, nor simply impulsive, but rational; 
and it must be allowed that no end can 
be more practical than to direct intel- 
lectual education towards the production 
of rational beings. How to attain this 
end, how to make all our appliances 
for intellectual training, from the three 
R's of the elementary school to the sixth 
form of the great public schools, tend 
towards it ; how to choose the subjects 
to be taught and the methods of teach- 
ing them, having regard to the age, the 
opportunities and the intellectual de- 
velopment and characteristics of the 
pupils, so as best to exercise the faculties 
concerned in reasoning, observation, 
comparison, analysis, combination, in- 
ference, and thereby make the small 
modicum of knowledge, which is all 
that at most can be given in school, 



serve the double purpose of placing an 
instrument in the pupils' hands and 
teaching them how to use it; finally, how 
so to conduct school examinations from 
the lowest to the highest, that they shall 
test the strength and accuracy of rea- 
soning power, not the mere quantity of 
facts and processes retained by the 
memory, — is a problem, or rather a series 
of problems, which I humbly think can 
be solved only by the study of educa- 
tion as a science. I think I may appeal, 
without fear of contradiction, to ex- 
aminers of every degree, for professional 
and academical as well as general edu- 
cation, to bear out my assertions that 
they are not solved yet, and that the de- 
velopment of intelligence producing a 
high average of reasoning power is not 
the general result of our present systems 
of education. 

I have not mentioned the universities 
or other means of higher education after 
school-life is ended, because their office 
is a different one. Knowledge, which in 
schools must be treated as a means to 
train intelligence, becomes in the uni- 
versity an end in itself, and yet should 
be made by university training, or what- 
ever answers to it in the lives of men 
and women who cannot enter a univer- 
sity, the means to another end not less 
worthy, — culture, that refinement of mind 
and taste produced by familiarity with 
the highest forms of thought, and the 
most perfect modes of expressing it. 
Although it may seem presumptuous to 
tread on ground so ably pre-occupied by 
Mr. Mattiiew Arnold, yet, in addressing 
an Association specially devoted to the 
investigation of physical science, and at 
a time when the paramount interest of 
those investigations, and the demand for 
practical utility, are apt to make people 
look upon culture as mere ornament, 
very charming, like good manners, when 
people have time for it, but Ijke them 
quite useless for the business of life, it 
may not be superfluous to show that 
culture has a real educational value, and 
imparts a finer edge, as it were, to our 
mental tools, apart from mere polish. 
Its grace is, indeed, beyond the reach of 
the many, as much as the grace of fine 
breeding, but some of its most precious 
fruits, appreciation of beauty, an en- 
larged mental horizon and purified taste, 
rejecting whatever is meretricious and 
exaggerated, may be won by all who 
have any leisure at all, and care to spend 



( 5 ) 



it in making acquaintance with our no- 
ble English literature. And if such cul- 
ture does not pay in cash, it pays in 
enjoyment ; it makes the mind rich with 
great thoughts and beautiful imagery, 
though the body may dwell in a garret, — 
riches which no moth can corrupt, or 
thieves break through and steal. 

The higher state of culture which 
should be reached through the syste- 
matic training of our Universities raises 
the mind to a higher level, and not only 
gives a finer taste by acquaintance with 
the best models, but a larger knowledge 
of human nature, of the play of human 
thought and passions under different 
circumstances, which excludes crudity 
of judgment no less than crudity of taste, 
and affords to the reasoning powers that 
exercise in the balancing of human pro- 
babilities,- the weighing of evidence 
coloured by human passion, which is 
the principal office of judgment in the 
actual relations of life, and which cannot 
be got out of the study of physical science 
dealing with the invariable laws of mat- 
ter, and admitting of proof by experi- 
ment. I may mention that our greatest 
statesmen have been men possessing 
this form of culture, and the fact that it 
is obtainable only by those who have 
means and leisure is one of the sti'ongest 
arguments for an aristocratic as against 
a democratic governing class. 

This culture was the paramount object 
of the founders of our universities and 
of the schools intended to prepare for 
them, and their whole system was di- 
rected to attain it through the study of 
classical literature, the only literature 
which then existed, and therefore the 
only, as it still is the best means 
of culture. Notwithstanding many mo- 
dern innovations and additions, the 
original object is still the predominant 
one. Is it generally attained ? I will 
not venture to answer that question, but 
will leave it to Mr. Matthew Arnold and 
the university authorities themselves to 
decide whether high culture is the 
general result of an education begun in 
a public school and ended at Oxford or 
Cambridge ; or whether, as I was assured 
not long ago, by one who had good 
means of judging, hundreds of young 
men leave our Universities after taking 
their degree, without the slightest tinc- 
ture of any culture at all. Assuming 
the notoriety of, at least, very common 
failure, let me ask if these things 



could be, if we had, first, a high na- 
tional ideal of culture as the necessary 
crowning of the educational edifice, 
giving us a standard which must be ap- 
proached by every man and woman 
laying claim to high education ; and, 
secondly, a science of education, by 
which we might discover and rectify 
those defects in our methods of teach- 
ing which so often waste the twelve years 
of boyhood and youth spent at school 
and college in grinding the dry husks of 
classical learning without ever getting 
at the rich kernel within. 

We come now to moral training ; and 
here let me point out that the Order I 
have followed is not an arbitrary but a 
natural one, for the physical life is first 
in order of time, then the life of intelli- 
gence, and lastly, moral life, which, ac- 
cording to the purely scientific analogy 
of evolution, would justify us in classing 
it as the highest. In the moral as in the 
intellectual nature of man we find a 
hierarchy of powers, and one having a 
rightful supremacy over the rest. This is 
the power we term conscience, — the voice 
within, which pronounces some actions 
right and others wrong, and determines 
the obligation expressed by ' I ought' or 
' I ought not ' In the establishment of 
this rightful supremacy, uncontested as 
soon as it is fully comprehended, lies the 
ideal of moral education. To teach ' I 
will ' to wait upon ' I ought ; ' to 
bring up the child to his moral man- 
hood when he becomes a ' law unto him- 
self,' and his appetites, desires, affec- 
tions, are made subject to his righteous 
will ; this is the paramount object of 
moral training, the standard by which to 
measure its success or failure. I will 
not enter upon the troubled ocean of 
. discussion concerning the origin of this 
moral sense, or the reality of free-will. 
It is enough for my purpose that in 
practice and by the universal consent of 
mankind, we do acknowledge the ex- 
istence of conscience, and the respon- 
sibility of every sane human being for 
his obedience to its law of right and 
wrong. 

Here, at least, it will be justly ob- 
served there can be no want of a 
standard. We have that of Christianity 
which permeates the moral atmosphere 
of the country and forms the unconscious 
basis of moral life, even to those who 
reject or ignore its authority. We have 
the laws of the land enforcing by pro- 



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hibitions and penalties certain broad 
outlines of morality, and we have public 
opinion commanding and forbidding 
actions in a region law cannot touch. 
Except by the lowest outcasts of society, 
these obligations of duty are universally 
recognised ; and every child who is 
taught at all, is taught that he has some 
duty towards God and his neighbour, 
which includes, at the very least, the ob- 
ligation to be honest in word and deed. 
And yet, who can look abroad upon so- 
ciety and say that it is practically go- 
verned by this ideal, or gives its awards 
strictly according to its standard ? If 
we may trust an authority which cer- 
tainly no one will accuse of want of 
knowledge of the society it condemns, 
or of any femininelynarrow and squeam- 
ish standard of morality, it would appear 
that our standard is sinking to a level 
scarcely sufficient to keep society to- 
gether,^ and that practically no high 
moral ideal exists among us. This is 
what the Titnes says in a leader of the 
I ith of this month : ' There is not an ob- 
server of human affairs who has not been 
disposed to give a portentous signifi- 
cance to scandals when they become so 
great and so numerous as to arrest and 
monopolise the attention. Scandals we 
expect, but not that they should eclipse 
all that is good in the world, and become 
the rule rather than the exception. . . . 
It is a simple matter of fact, that these 
last twelve months have been marked 
by a succession of disgraceful scandals. 
. . . They are scandals in the very 
matter upon which we most pique our- 
selves. There is increasing audacity, 
increasing greed, increasing fraud, in- 
creasing impunity ; and these are 
stimulated and fed by increasing in- 
dulgence and ostentation. . . . With- 
out reference to any one case, or any 
one class of cases, we cannot help 
thinking that the police and assize reports 
exhibit an increasing amount of the crimes 
arising from self-exaltation, self-confi- 
dence, self-indulgence, and uncontrollable 
"will," as it is called, but which is not 
"will," but the very contrary of it— mere 
passion.' This is a terribly severe verdict; 
but after making every allowance for the 
difficulty of fairly judging one's own 
time, enough remains to show that our 
professed ideal and standard of morality, 
is not our practical and efficient one, 
exercising real sway overmen's thoughts 
and conduct. How is it to be made 



efficient ? How is our universal teach- 
ing of morality to be rescued from its 
present impotency, and carried from the 
region of barren precept to that of prac- 
tical application to the duties of life ? 
How can we secure to conscience the 
supremacy de facto which it has de jure, 
writing upon it this law : — that self- 
mastery in obedience to duty is dis- 
tinctively human, and self-indulgence 
bestial ? How can we create the second 
nature of habit, which will keep conduct 
steady in the groove of accustomed right- 
doing even when passion is blinding 
reason and silencing conscience ? These 
are questions, on the solution of which 
the honour and prosperity of the coun- 
try in the future manifestly depend ; but 
how are they to be solved except by that 
deeper knowledge of the springs of hu- 
man action and the means of working 
them, which only a science of education, 
in other words, the applied science of 
human nature, can supply .'* 

There is another branch of educa- 
tion which deals with the religious ele- 
ment in our nature, the latest developed 
of all. It is potentially the noblest, for 
it is that by which we conceive, and love, 
and worship the Divine, and walk by 
faith in the invisible and eternal, but it 
is also the root of our worst evils, super- 
stition, fanaticism, and bigotry. Over 
this element, education, working through 
our earhest associations, through the 
teaching of the pulpit, of home and of 
school, through direct and indirect in- 
fluence incessantly exercised, wields al- 
most unbounded power ; and it has a 
professed ideal and standard generally 
accepted as of divine authority. The 
standard is the standard of Christ, love 
to God and love to man ; the ideal is 
the life of Christ, an ideal so divinely 
lovely, that shining through the clash 
of hostile creeds, and the disfiguring 
mists of superstition, it draws after it, 
with invincible might, the hearts even 
of those who least acknowledge its 
divinity. Yet, if we look round on this 
Christian nation, so apt to boast that the 
true light shines upon it, and to thank God 
that it is not as other nations are, shall we 
find love to God and love to man the 
prevailing characteristics of our religious 
life, attesting the success of our religious 
teaching? There are so many other 
causes of its notorious failure than that 
which it is the special business of this 
paper to point out, i.e., ignorance on 



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the part of the teachers, of the human 
heart, and how to sway it, that I should 
not have touched upon the subject 
except to point out that intellectual and 
moral training are most powerful factors 
in religious training, and that their 
standard will inevitably react upon the 
religious standard. When our national 
and practical standard of intellectual 
education is the power of sound judg- 
ment in the discernment of truth, and 
of our moral education, the sovereignty 
of conscience, we shall have laid the 
best foundation in human power, for 
religious education up to the Christian 
standard. 

All that I have said hitherto applies 
equally to both sexes, and is based upon 
the human nature common to both. 
The standards of intellectual, moral, 
and religious training I have endea- 
voured to set forth, are the same for all 
endowed with reason, conscience, and 
the capacity for religious emotions. But 
as the education of women has been, 
and is still, almost universally placed 
on a wholly different level from 
that of men, and as, after all, women 
make up the half, or rather more than 
the half, of the nation, a paper on the 
standard of national education would be 
very incomplete without some special 
mention of the standard of education 
for women. Strange, and not less sad 
than strange, to say there is no general 
ideal of what a woman should be, of 
what constitutes perfect womanhood. 
There is an immense deal of talk about 
women being womanly, and being 
trained into good wives and mothers, 
but men's minds seem in the haziest 
condition regarding the qualities which 
constitute true womanliness and go to 
the making of a good wife and mother, 
and still more as to the training re- 
quired to develope them. Practically 
there is no standard of education for 
women, above that of the elementary 
schools, and the whole subject is still 
in a chaotic state, tossed on the horns 
of every variety of opinion, from that 
which measures their every claim by the 
convenience and pleasure of men, to 
that which concedes to them perfect 
equality with the other sex. And yet a 
noble ideal of womanhood, raising a 
high standard of womanly worth and 
dignity, is the very salt of a nation's 
social life, which, if it lose its savour, 
society grows corrupt, and slowly rots to 



the core. Vague, incomplete, and inconsis- 
tently acted upon as it is, there can be no 
doubt that the English ideal of the purity 
and sanctity of home presided over by 
the \vife and mother has preserved what- 
ever there is of sound and wholesome 
social life in the country. But there are 
signs abroad of a change for the worse 
even here. In the same article I quoted 
before, the Thftes lays upon women much 
of the blame for 'that boundless and 
ruinous extravagance which introduces 
all the vices, and disables all the virtues, 
even to decay and extinction.' I think 
it may be fairly doubted whether the 
sums lost in one season at play or on the 
turf, not to mention other roads to ruin, 
by husbands and sons, would not cover 
the expenditure on dress and entertain- 
ments by wives and daughters for half a 
lifetime ; but there is no question that the 
example of self-indulgence, of love of 
pleasure sweeping out of sight the 
serious duties of life, given by women 
from whom greater self-restraint, a 
higher sense of duty, are always expected, 
is a fatal encouragement to masculine 
license. Considering, however, that al- 
though there is no avowed and accepted 
standard of education for women, the 
unavowed, but not less powerful stand- 
ard, held up expressly or impliedly 
before them from the cradle upwards, is 
to please men, and that they learn from 
their earliest experience that men, as a 
rule, are best pleased by the external 
shows of beauty, dress, and fashion ; 
most easily won by the ' giddy heed and 
wanton cunning' of coquetry ; most 
effectually repelled by any independent 
exercise of thought and judgment, I 
confess, the wonder to me is, that they 
are as good as they are, and that there 
is still so much sound-heartedness, truth, 
and obedience to duty left among them. 
None the less do we urgently need a 
high national ideal and standard of educa- 
tion for them. Not long ago Professor 
Max Miiller said to me, 'The future 
of England depends upon its young 
mothers, but how are they to be 
educated?' Is not this a problem 
worth solving at any cost of thought and 
study ; and can there be in the whole 
range of scientific investigation one 
more worthy to occupy our ablest minds, 
or whose right solution is of more im- 
portance to the welfare of the nation and 
of the human race ? 

I have done. Let me only strengthen 



( 



) 



my pica by words of greater authority 
than mine : ' Nations,' says Mr. Matthew 
Arnold, ' are not truly great solely be- 
cause the individuals comprising them 
are numerous, free, and active ; but they 
are great when these numbers, this 
freedom, this activity, are employed in 
the service of an ideal somewhat higher 
than that of an ordinary man taken by 
himself: not only the greatness of 
nations, but their very unity, depends on 
this. In fact, unless a nation's action is 
inspired by an ideal commanding the 
respect of the many as higher than each 
ordinary man's own, there is nothing to 
keep that nation together, nothing to 
resist the dissolvent action of innumera- 



ble and conflicting wills and opinions.' 
To these words based, not on theory, but 
on the history of the decline and fall of 
nations, let me add this practical com- 
ment. Of all ideals giving a nation 
unity and greatness, the most powerful 
is a high ideal of a national character, 
of what its men and women, its gentle- 
men and gentlewomen, should be; and 
of all sciences giving us command over 
the forces of nature, none is so important 
as that which will give us command 
over the forces of the human heart and 
mind, and enable us with approximate 
certainty to educate the nation up to 
its ideal. Maria G. Grey. 



London : Printed by John Strangeways, Castle St. Leicester Sq. 



Pamphlets Issued by the Wo?nen s Education Union. 
Published by Messrs. Ridgway, Piccadilly. 



I. 

ON THE SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS FOR 
IMPROVING THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 

By Mrs. W. GREY. Price 6d. 

IL 

ARE WE TO HAVE EDUCATION FOR OUR 
MIDDLE CLASS GIRLS.? 

The History of the Camden Collegiate School. 
By MARY GURNEY. Third Edition. Price 6d. 

III. 

THE WORK OF THE NATIONAL UNION. 

By EMILY SHIRREFF. Price 6d. 

IV. 

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF THE TRAINING 

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By JOSEPH PAYNE. Price 6^. 

V. 

ON THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS OF THE 
MIDDLE CLASSES. 

By Miss ISABELLA M. S. TODD. Price 6d. 

VL 

ON THE STUDY OF EDUCATION AS A 

SCIENCE. 

By Mrs. WILLIAM GREY. Price 6d. 



IPampWetg tip tbe game author. 



ON THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN, 

Price Sixpence. 



THE IDOLS OF SOCIETY. 

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OLD MAIDS. 

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LONDON : WILLIAM RIDGWAY, PICCADILLY. 



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